More than 129,000 Illinois voters went to the polls but didn’t vote for president in the November election — more than three times the number who took a pass on the top race four years ago, a new study found.
The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform found that out of 5,666,118 total votes cast in Illinois, 129,694 voters didn’t cast a ballot for president. That’s a 135 percent increase from 2008 when 55,138 Illinois voters skipped the presidential vote. In 2012, 37,730 didn’t vote for president.
Sarah Brune, executive director for the non-profit group, said she used data from the U.S. Elections Project and local state election numbers to show the large contrast — which doesn’t quite have an easy explanation.
“It’s hard to say exactly why there was that increase but it certainly points to the fact that it was a sort of different and unprecedented election and there were so many sorts of new phenomena and oddities,” Brune said.
She said it warrants a study of what type of voters chose to vote for their local offices, over the highest office.
“It may be because there was turmoil on both sides of the aisle,” Brune said.
Democrat Hillary Clinton easily carried Illinois, largely with votes from the more populated Chicago area. She won 11 counties statewide, while Republican Donald Trump won the other 91.
Illinois isn’t the only state with large numbers of voters having skipped the presidential vote. The study found increases in voters skipping the presidential race in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio. The reverse was found in Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin — where less voters skipped a presidential vote, compared to the 2008 and 2012 elections.
